[DMBand0026]

I need advice, so I feel like I've come to the right place.

I recently bought a house, I move in January 18th 2008. Needless to say, I'm going to need purchasing advice on quite a few things.

I'll start with the cell phone. I'm currently under contract with Verizon and had planned to stay with them, however with the introduction of the iPhone, I'm in love. I'm in Chicago so pretty much any big carrier will work well for me...right? I'm not exactly thrilled with Verizon for anything other than the coverage they offer. I've been feeling more and more lately that they are overpriced and offer fewer features than other carriers.

Next, I'm looking into a MacBook. I currently use a PowerBook 12" 1.33ghz with 1gig of RAM. I was looking at the 2.2ghz MacBook. I do a considerable amount of film editing (some of it HD) and I wasn't sure if the MacBook would offer me the kind of speed increase I'm looking for over the PowerBook. I love my PowerBook, but it has become frustratingly slow when it comes to editing video. I need portability so desktops aren't an option and I love the 13" widescreen. Should I wait until the processors get faster or the graphics situation gets figured out with the MacBooks or are the new integrated graphics enough for what I need to do?

Any thoughts on TVs? I have a TV now, it's a 32" standard definition flat tube TV that I got for free so I can't really complain about it that much. However, my parents own a HDTV and I've become somewhat spoiled in that regard and I'm not looking foreword to going back to all SDTV. I'm looking to keep the cost under $1500 but I want full HD, not 720p. I'm willing to go with a projection, plasma, or LCD. I'm really not picky.

Lastly (until I think of something else), TV/internet/VOiP. Again, I'm in Chicago so my choices are AT&T or Comcast. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the VOiP thing or just use my cell phone and forego the whole landline thing. I'm aware of the possible problems this causes with the 911 system as I am a firefighter / paramedic. This doesn't bother me. I don't have kids and I'll be living alone so if an ambulance can't find my house for some reason I'll be the only one who dies. No big deal as far as I'm concerned. Anyone have any recommendations as far as these services go? Should I go with cable or look into satellite? I'd like to go with Verizon FiOS internet but as of now it's not available in my area. Horror stories about AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, or Dish Network?

Edit: FiOS is not avalable in my area yet and I don't know when it will be. Can I call Verizon and find out something like this?


Thanks to everyone who can contribute. Any advice about any of these things would be greatly appreciated.

[Kickaha]

I'd skip the landline - we did two years ago, and haven't looked back. (E911 on the phone helps.)

We're in otherwise the same boat. I'm strongly considering dropping cable altogether and going with FiOS for the intarwebs. What little TV we do watch is available on iTunes or other spots online. (Or, y'know, DVD.)

We also are looking at a TV upgrade. (32"? You spoiled SOB... ) I dearly love Panasonic's professional plasma studio monitor line, but the LCDs have been dropping in price nicely. Now that things seem to be more or less on parity, I'm going to have to seriously take a look at the market again.

So... like... tell us what you find out.

[Ryan]

As far as HD goes, if you're getting anything <50", don't bother paying extra for 1080p, unless you plan on sitting really close. You probably won't notice the difference, IMO.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

[Dave]

As far as the MacBook goes, do you need to do HD video editing remotely, or can you be tied to one location for that? Cause the 17" MBP has an option for a screen that'll do full HD video, which I'm ->assuming*<- is a big deal if you want to do HD video editing.

*I don't know, I've never done any video work.

[kretara]

I had Comcast VOIP and it was almost unusable.
The area I live in has lines that were laid 5-10 years ago and also lots of 'broadband' users.
In the few months that we had the Comcast 'Triple Play', we were without a working (home) phone for most of the time. When it did work, there were many dropped packets and weird sounds on the line. The only time it worked OK was in the middle of the night..then it worked very well.

Comcast would do nothing to fix the situation. It was a constant stream of reboot your modem (if you are calling from your VOIP line, rebooting your modem will kill your call -- every CSR used this to try and end the call), oh you are using a Mac -- well if you had a Windows computer it would work (WTF!! the computer is not involved at all) and we will have a tech out to you next week (of course, the almost never showed).

My advice, avoid anything Comcast.

I'm using Dish and ATT (phone/DSL) and things work fine.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by kretara I had Comcast VOIP and it was almost unusable.

Go to www.consumerist.com and search for Comcast for some truly stunning stories about how bad they are.

[Bryson]

What software do you do that video editing on? Because the integrated graphics will not allow you to use the new version of Final Cut, and may be an issue for older versions as well.

[DMBand0026]

Using Final Cut Express, a little bit of iMovie for some smaller and easier projects, older version of Final Cut Pro for other things. I'm kind of all over the map.

So it seems that Comcast is to be avoided. I've heard that as well but don't have much personal experience with them. The dish thing seems to be the way to go, although I'm not entirely sure if I'm even getting cable TV or not, but high speed internet is a must.

Ryan, thanks for the link, but the chart is a little hard to understand. I'm not so much a visual person (read: retarded.) I'm planning on placing the TV in a room where I can't imagine I'll ever be sitting any closer than 5' and probably no farther away than 25'. My parents have a 42" plasma that's 1080p and I'm really impressed with the picture.

If I were to go with 720p would that still allow me to watch HD-DVD and or BluRay? I looked around and found that they still have HDMI inputs which leads me to believe they would display HD just fine from any source, but I'm just not sure about the picture quality. Is it really something that isn't noticeable?


Edit: Any thoughts on AT&T wireless? The iPhone? Can anyone who has one tell me how easy or difficult it is to text on? I send a lot of text messages so this is a big concern of mine. Of course I wouldn't buy one without testing it first, but I don't think testing something for 20 minutes will really give me the most accurate feel of the product.

[Luca]

I don't really know anything about the other wireless companies, but I can say that Verizon really is overrated. My family has a family plan through them, and the thing is... the only reason we have them is the coverage. If we weren't in a fairly rural setting, we wouldn't need to put up with them at all.

They have two things going for them: Coverage and Unlimited IN Calling. Calls to all other Verizon phones are free, and there are a lot of people in my area who use Verizon thanks to the shitty coverage offered by other networks, so a lot of our calls end up being free. However, they're on CDMA, which restricts you to CDMA phones only. And the worst bit - they put their god-awful custom OS on every single phone of theirs, disabling most of the factory features and forcing you to pay extra for a lot of things that the phone can normally do on its own for free.

What gets me, though, about the Verizon phone OS, is that it basically mitigates any reason for buying a special or higher end phone. Recently I upgraded all my family's phones because they were ancient and needed to be replaced. I managed to work it so I got a RAZR for myself while everyone else got your standard freebie flip-phone. Luckily I didn't pay any extra for the RAZR, because although it has bluetooth and a higher resolution camera, it doesn't really have anything else on the freebies. This shitty OS turns every phone into a generic "Verizon phone."

Oh, guess what else? In addition to the features that are removed and turned into for-pay features, there are also a few that are crippled for no reason at all, where you can't even pay them extra money to use them properly. For instance, their OS allows you to add contacts to groups, but you can't delete or rename the default groups, and you can only add ten contacts to any one group. WHY? Does it help ANYONE to limit the functionality in that way? And I'm sure there are a million other little things like that, but I haven't bothered to explore.

Anyway, the point... don't get Verizon unless they're the only carrier that won't drop calls every other time. I'd go with AT&T, since it's GSM and it's a much better deal than T-Mobile.

[kretara]

There is no good (national) cell phone company.
I have ATT. I have had no issues with them so far, the service is pretty good (few dead spots or dropped calls) but the pricing is very high. I only use ATT because I get a big discount from my employer. Contrast that with my time with Cingular when I was living in Boston. Constant dropped calls, numerous dead spots and poor quality overall.

My brother works for Sprint (he was with Nextel for years before Sprint bought them) as an Engineer and his exact words to me about Sprint are: "only an idiot would get a phone from Sprint".

You need to see which service works best in your area. What works great in my area (ATT and Alltel) might suck big time in Chicago.

IMHO, if you go with a national cell company you are going to eventually be fcked by them in one way or another.

You might also check out http://consumerist.com/ to see the issues others have had with every national cell/cable/internet company.

For 2 years we used Consumer Cellular (ATT reseller) and they were fantastic. If there was ever an issue, they took care of it quickly, were very helpful and wonderful on the phone. The only downside is that their phone selection is low end (on their web site). I bet you could use an unlocked phone, but I am not sure.

[DMBand0026]

I already have Verizon, but I wouldn't be opposed to getting rid of them. I haven't had many issues with them, but I feel they're slightly overpriced and the OS on the phones bothers the hell out of me. I can get a discount on pretty much any national carrier because of my line of work so that's a non factor in choosing. I just don't want to be stuck with something for the next 2 years that I'm gong to hate. I guess I could do a trial period as most carriers offer a 30 day trial so you can test their network and features. I'm not in a rural area by any stretch of the imagination, but I travel to some rural areas every once in a while and I don't want to be stuck with a phone that doesn't work everywhere, especially at my new house where I'm not planning on having a landline.

[Yontsey]

Just chiming in. If the iPhone texting is anything like the touch, I would get frustrated with it. It's not bad, but like you, I text a lot. It's easier and I have less mistakes with the physical keyboard. I have a Sidekick3 through T-Mobile and I love it. I do love the iPhone/touch set up, but their texting package and the keyboard would make me stay away. I always get great service with T-Mobile too.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by DMBand0026 Ryan, thanks for the link, but the chart is a little hard to understand. I'm not so much a visual person (read: retarded.) I'm planning on placing the TV in a room where I can't imagine I'll ever be sitting any closer than 5' and probably no farther away than 25'. My parents have a 42" plasma that's 1080p and I'm really impressed with the picture. If I were to go with 720p would that still allow me to watch HD-DVD and or BluRay? I looked around and found that they still have HDMI inputs which leads me to believe they would display HD just fine from any source, but I'm just not sure about the picture quality. Is it really something that isn't noticeable?

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray would not be a problem with a 720p display. This may have changed with more recent models, but the Toshiba A1 player doesn't even output true 1080p, but rather takes 1080i from the disc, downscales to 720p, then upscales back to 1080p for output (I think), so you're actually better off with a 720p display, for now. Like I said, new models may have fixed this.

Now, at 42", if you were able to compare a 720p display (with native 720p source) and a 1080p display (once again, native 1080p source) at a five foot viewing distance, you would notice a slight difference. But after eight or so feet, it should be largely indistinguishable.

[DMBand0026]

Interesting. I should roll out to my local home electronics emporium and check it out for myself. Although I don't know if the source they're using would be 720p or 1080p. I imagine that broadcast and cable TV is 1080. I just want to get the most for my money and be future proof as well (at least for the foreseeable future.) I don't want a TV I'm not really going to be able to fully use in 3 years. I'm sure you understand my concern. Thanks for the helpful advice, I'm really more of a sound guy, I don't know as much about the video aspect as I'd like.

I got the chance to go to a local Apple store tonight for the first time in ages so I could check out the iPhone in person. They were closed. Yes, closed. WTF? Apparently they closed the store a while ago to do some, "improvements" and will be reopening on November 16th. Total crap if you ask me. The only improvement I need them to make is to be open when I'm there and not, "making improvements."